PRAGUE, Oct 6, 2008 (AFP) - The current cult of economic growth at all costs may harm the civilisation, former Czech President Vaclav Havel said in an television interview Monday on the global financial crisis.

'The cult of permanent change, newness, growth at all costs may lead civilisation to an abyss,' said Havel, who was Czech president in 1993-2003.

Interviewed by the Z1 TV station a day after his 72nd birthday, Havel also called for a certain degree of market regulation.

'If we regulate the famous invisible hand of the market here and there, maybe banks will not collapse that often. But the regulation won't change anything about this chase for consumer values,' he said.

'People need some existential revolution, some shock to their general sense to recover their wits,' he added.

Havel, a dissent playwright in the communist era was in the vanguard of the 1989 'Velvet Revolution' that restored democracy to the country.